I'm just beginning to go through Rationality: From AI to Zombies. I want to make the most of the lessons contained in the sequences. Usually when I read a book I simply take notes on what seems useful at the time, and a lot of it is forgotten a year...
For a while now I've been very interested in learning useful knowledge and acquiring useful skills. Of course there's no shortage of useful knowledge and skills to acquire, and so I've often thought about how best to spend my limited time learning. When I came across the concept of Force...
I'm just beginning to go through Rationality: From AI to Zombies. I want to make the most of the lessons contained in the sequences. Usually when I read a book I simply take notes on what seems useful at the time, and a lot of it is forgotten a year later. Any thoughts on how best to internalize the lessons from the sequences?
[Forgetting Important Lessons Learned]
Does this happen to you?
I'm not necessarily talking about mistakes you've made which have caused significant emotional pain, and you've learnt an important lesson from. I think these tend to be easier to remember. I'm more referring to personal processes you've optimized or things you've spent time thinking about and decided the best way to approach that type of problem. ...and then a similar situation or problem appears months or years later and you either (a) fail to recognize it's a similar situation, (b) completely forget about the previous situation and your previous conclusion as the best way to handle this type of problem, or (c) fail to even really think about the new situation as a problem you may have previously solved.
Anyone else frustrated by this?
Do you have any strategies you use to overcome this problem?
Money is just 1 small part of the equation. People are motivated by other things such as freedom (ability to work remotely, set their own hours, set their own holidays), the ability to learn, respect (treating them like a partner/integral part of the business) etc. I haven't read it, but I've heard that Drive by Dan Pink[1] does a really good job at explaining this.
An example of this would be my Hire an Aspiring Entrepreneur strategy, which you can read about here: http://42insights.com/hire-aspiring-entrepreneur/.
The $4/hour part refers to hiring overseas contractors on places like oDesk. Again, you can get some fantastic people here by designing a position that gives them what they want in other areas. For example, contractors on oDesk are constantly looking for work, so giving them a permanent position where they are guaranteed a set number of hours per week is a great way to attract high quality candidates. I also wrote about this on my blog: http://42insights.com/how-to-hire-a-virtual-assistant/.
I used metaphors to encode it into a form that would make it easier for me to remember, so it wouldn't be of much use to you. The book is a really quick and simple read, and I highly recommend you go through the process yourself.
Good point. Here are mine:
The systems mindset. Almost everything we do is a repetitive task, and for every repetitive task we have a process. It's tempting to think that a lot of what we do is complex problem solving that is not repetitive, but that's not true. We still follow a process to solve seemingly complex problems, even if we don't initially realise it or it initially seems complex. That means most of what we can do can be described and documented. If it can be documented, then it can (a) be systematically optimized and improved, (b) act as a guide for us to follow to ensure quality control, (c) reduce the
For a while now I've been very interested in learning useful knowledge and acquiring useful skills. Of course there's no shortage of useful knowledge and skills to acquire, and so I've often thought about how best to spend my limited time learning.
When I came across the concept of Force Multiplication, it seemed like an appropriate metaphor for a strategy to apply to choosing where to invest my time and energy in acquiring useful skills and knowledge. I started to think about what areas or skills would make sense to learn about or acquire first, to:
I've systematized enough of my business, and trained people to run those systems, that I can now dedicate the first half of my day to learning about cognitive science, psychology, rationality and other related topics. Just started studying this week!
It seems to me that the paraphrasing in parentheses is also preying on the Conjunction Bias, by adding additional detail.